Report Suggests China May Lift Console Gaming Ban

from the no-more-defaming-gaming dept

Due to recent events and blame-shifting attempts by certain lobbying groups, video games are once again in the crosshairs here in America. It's unclear to me as of yet whether or not this will amount to a heavy dose of grandstanding noise and then die off, or if any of the crackpot proposals surrounding games will actually be enacted. The studies linking gaming with all manner of negative impacts are, at best, all over the place. Proponents of legislation will often claim that since there is no evidence that games don't harm youths, a proactive approach is the sensible one. Those on my side of the debate, i.e. people that prefer logic to grandstanding, prefer to suggest that it is incumbent upon those affirming a stance to provide evidence for it, as opposed to asking others to disprove a link that likely doesn't exist. In any case, whether you think legislation against games is warranted or not, one needs only to look to China's mainland to see what effect such legislation might have.

That's because China banned console gaming a decade ago. Due to a fear of harming the physical and mental growth of Chinese children, the government banned the manufacture, sale or import of all gaming consoles. The results are about what you'd expect, which is to say that there are all kinds of gaming consoles in the Chinese market, except they're either smuggled in or they're simply called something else in marketing material to get around the ban.

Beijing Eedoo successfully launched a multimedia entertainment console in the mainland market in April last year. But the company has changed the product name several times in order to avoid sensitive issues.

Jack Luo, chief executive officer of Beijing Eedoo, insisted his company is selling a "sports and entertainment machine", rather than a game console, to Chinese families.

That's certainly one laughably transparent way to do it, I suppose. The other is to sell pirated games along with smuggled systems, which a select number of Chinese businesses do. With so little competition, the margins are extreme. They love the ban on consoles. Unfortunately for those engaged in selling these black market consoles, the Chinese government appears to be waking up to the uselessness of their law and is said to be considering lifting the ban entirely.

Rumors have circulated in the Chinese media that some international companies have already sensed the government's changing attitude. They hope to figure out the Chinese authorities' intentions so they can make a rapid response, analysts said.

 

Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), a subsidiary responsible for Sony's PlayStation business, set up a branch in South China's Guangdong province in June last year. The Guangdong branch will conduct training and research and development work for Sony.

 

Microsoft introduced its Kinect, a controller-free game console, to the Chinese mainland in October last year. However, Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft Corp's Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group, said Kinect is not used for games in China but for other purposes, such as medical treatment and education.

 

Filed Under: china, consoles, gaming

EA: Withholding The Next Great Videogame Franchise For The Next Console Is Good Business

from the so-you-get-GTA42-instead,-jerks dept

I'll admit that video game producer Electronic Arts confuses me quite often. Any company their size is going to suffer from some internal conflicting opinions, but as an organization EA sometimes comes off as suffering from multiple personality disorder. One personality says that sales pricing on games is horrific, while the other embraces free games. They've shown that they can use trademark law well, but then manage to swallow a crazy pill when it comes to recognizing how an endless stream of sequels hurts their business. That last link is from 2007, when the boss of EA at the time admitted that pumping out sequels instead of original titles was having a negative effect on the bottom line. It seems that in five short years, the new brass at EA forgot that admission.

Speaking with Games Industry, current President of EA's labels, Frank Gibeau, discusses the chaos of the marketplace and the golden era of gaming he believes is going to come out of it. I'll admit, there's some very encouraging stuff in the piece, between once again acknowledging the emerging success of new business models, free to play games, and the power of the internet to massively expand the marketplace for gaming as a whole. That's all good thinking. But then we get to where he discusses EA's intellectual property strategy.

"The time to launch an IP is at the front-end of the hardware cycle, and if you look historically the majority of new IPS are introduced within the first 24 months of each cycle of hardware platforms," Gibeau says. "Right now, we're working on 3 to 5 new IPs for the next gen, and in this cycle we've been directing our innovation into existing franchises.

"As much as there's a desire for new IP, the market doesn't reward new IP this late in the cycle; they end up doing okay, but not really breaking through."

In case you don't want to parse through the exec speak, let me break this down for you. EA is actively working on new, original franchises, but they won't release them until the next generation of consoles comes out. This is under the notion that new franchises released in the middle or late stages of a console's life are doomed to failure or mediocrity. There are examples of why that outlook shouldn't be taken as gospel: Pokemon (released 7 years into the original Game Boy's life), Grand Theft Auto (released roughly 4 years into the original Playstation's life cycle), Gran Turismo (released roughly 3 years into the original Plastation's life cycle), or Guitar Hero (released roughly 5 years into the PS2's life cycle). All of those titles, by the way, are among the best selling franchises of all time. The point is that if you match the desire for new titles that Gibeau acknowledges with great game franchises, you build huge sales.

But even if Gibeau's supposition was true, there is a problem: the console life cycle this go around is longer than previous generations. While rumors about the next generation of gaming consoles surfaced way back in 2010, everyone's best guess for the soonest release is sometime in 2013 (and by "sometime", they mean Christmas at best). The XBOX 360 and PS3 came out in 2005 and 2006 respectively, which puts us somewhere in the neighborhood of a seven or eight year gap between console releases, depending on who gets to market first. Wii consoles are in roughly the same boat.

For the sake of comparison, here are some other timelines for console generations:

1. Console generartion jump between the NES to Sega Genesis: 4 years
2. Console generation jump between the Genesis/SNES to Playstation/N64: 5 years
3. Console generation jump between the Playstation to PS2/Xbox: 5 years
4. Console generation jump between the PS2/XBOX to PS3/XBox 360: 4 years for Xbox, 5 years for Playstation

The point is that the strategy is going to have to change with what is looking like something between 1.5 and 2 times the life cycle of the console. Customers simply aren't going to buy sequels for longer periods of time and if EA doesn't want to fill their need for new titles, someone else will. And, despite his earlier words, even Gibeau hints that he recognizes this.

"This is the longest cycle that any of us have ever seen, and we're at the point where a little bit of fatigue has set in, and people are wondering what they can possibly do next. I've seen the machines that we're building games for, and they're spectacular."

But then he goes right back to discussing how balls-droppingly great the next generation of hardware is going to be and how that's where they'll focus.

"Gen 4 hardware is a huge opportunity, and it's going to lead to a huge growth spurt for the industry."

Once again, it seems like they have multiple personality disorder. In the meantime, perhaps actually developing new material for the consoles your fans will have to deal with for the next couple of years yet might do wonders to turn around that sliding stock price.

 

Filed Under: consoles, video games
Companies: ea

Japanese Video Game Guru Says Console Days Are Numbered

from the can't-hold-back-progress dept

We've talked in the past about the differences between open and closed platforms in driving innovation and adoption. Unlike some, I'm not against inherently closed platforms. I just don't think that they will survive long-term. In fact, I think that closed platforms often do a very good job of defining initial markets, and convincing people to leap into those markets. However, in the long term, it usually seems that the open platforms, which may start out a lot less polished and useful, not only catch up, but surpass the closed platforms. It's not difficult to understand why this happens. When you have a closed platform, the company putting it out has to account for everything -- and thus, initially, it's a lot more advanced and well thought out. However, with an open platform, the initial offering is often chaotic and messy and difficult for new users to understand and adopt. But over time, with many more people able to work on that platform and to innovate on that platform, it gets better and better and better. And it becomes more difficult for the closed platforms to catch up.

Does this always happen? No. But it's happened enough that you have to have a good reason for why it won't happen in any particular market. Of course, one of the examples that people have used for where this has not happened is in the video game market. There, it's the closed platforms -- PS3, Xbox and the Wii -- that have continued to dominate, while the more open PC platform has languished in comparison. There could be a variety of reasons for this -- including the fact that there is a fair bit of competition between the three platforms and the fact that no one has really built a credible open competitor (the PC may be too general purpose). But, apparently, some still think the era of the closed video gaming console is unlikely to last much longer -- and at least one prognosticator is certainly someone who knows the business quite well.

Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid surprised a lot of people by saying that the video game console is dying, and the future is a much more open solution, that involves games that you can play on any device: computer, mobile, TV, etc.

"In the near future, we'll have games that don't depend on any platform," Kojima said at a news conference announcing the latest installment in a game saga that began in 1987.

"Gamers should be able to take the experience with them in their living rooms, on the go, when they travel -- wherever they are and whenever they want to play. It should be the same software and the same experience," he said.

Who knows if this is true or not, but it would certainly fit the pattern we've seen elsewhere...

Filed Under: consoles, video games